Saint Mazie: A Novel by Jami Attenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

walk and I didn’t see her again before bed. There’s a first, me beating Jeanie to bed.
    It seems like it takes a lot of time, courting. You sit and wait for them to call you. Then you sit and wait for them to come to your home. Then you sit and wait for them to tell you how beautiful you are. Then you sit and wait for them to fall in love. I’ve no patience for any of it. I want instant love.
    Jeanie’s been spending a lot of time at the track, too. Making up errands she needs to run. And she’s been hanging out with Bella Barker now that she’s back in town again. Only now her name’s Belle Baker, like that makes any difference. She’s still got the same voice, the same eyes, those pits of sadness. Barker or Baker, you are who you are.
    Jeanie does whatever she wants now. She works Rosie and Louis like a con. She took all my tricks and made them perfect. I’m not jealous of most of it. I wouldn’t want to hold Ethan Fallow’s hand for hours on end. I wouldn’t want to nod my head at everything Belle says.
    Only the freedom I envy.
    Jeanie gets to do whatever she wants, I told Rosie last night.
    Rosie said: Jeanie I don’t worry about.

Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1918
    That little Nance came back again today. She stood in front of me after the line for the last show had died out. A dried-up girl, younger than me. The bottom of her dress was in tatters. Her hair was long and unbrushed. Her tan overcoat was stained with something purple. Still, I wasn’t buying what she was selling. She was no beggar. There was lipstick on those lips.
    She said: Please, ma’am, please. I’m broke and hungry and I’ve got two little ones at home and we haven’t had food in a week and can you please please please help us. A penny, a nickel, something, anything.
    Her voice was too singsongy for me to trust her. She’d made that speech too many times before.
    I said: Scram, little miss. I know what you’ll do with any scratch I give you.
    She said: I swear on my life it’s for my kids.
    She reached down the front of her dress and pulled out a rusted locket on a chain. She struggled to open it, and it was then that I could see her hands were shaking. But when she finally released it, she pressed it up against my glass cage. There were photographs on both sides, a boy and a girl. Two faded babies.
    Looking at the pictures, I got a choke in my throat. I might have lost all the air in my body if I didn’t go to these children straightaway and help them. I couldn’t help but think about Rosie. All the sadness. Her on the couch all those months.
    I had a bag of chocolates sitting in the cage and I slid them to her. She grabbed it and stuck her filthy fingers in it. Keep it, is what I was thinking.
    I said: Where’s their father?
    She said: Their father went to war and never came back.
    I said: My condolences.
    She said: No condolences. He’s in France, the bastard. He met some girl there, surprise of the century.
    I felt sorry for her. It’s easier to let things go when there’s no reminder of someone. But she had two babies in a locket.
    She said: He couldn’t wait to get away. He got me hooked, and then he joined up to get away from it and from me and he left me behind with those two babies. Isn’t that funny? Easier for him to go fight the Germans than spend another minute with me.
    She started licking her fingers.
    She said: Sweet Jesus, it’s good.
    I watched her eat. She put one chocolate after another in her mouth. She was a greedy child, is all. A hungry brat.
    She asked me for money but I said no.
    She said: They’re real, I swear on my life.
    I said: Then let me see them. I’ll lock up right now and go there. Last show’s nearly over.
    She had eaten all the chocolate. She could have run. But she didn’t.
    So I gathered together all the food I had in my cage, another bag of candy, half a sandwich. Then I followed her home through the pitch-black streets. We didn’t talk about her problems, we talked about the